Time
Travel Heroes is a historic strategy/RPG hybrid developed by Huayu Game. Set
in the Three Kingdoms era, the browser-based game brings historical heroes into
a well-strung fictional narrative. By combining a fantastic tale with ancient
Chinese history and folklore, developers have a unique plot in store for us.
However, it's the gameplay that counts and I must say that the game does pretty
well in providing a deep strategic experience.

Character Creation Screen

For starters, the game doesn't lean toward the traditional strategy genre.
It's a clever mix of team-based strategy and role-playing gameplay elements. The
character creation screen simply lets you choose a "Hero" from six different
characters consisting of dashing male fighters and sexy female warriors. Each
character profile has a special class associated to it. If you click on the
profile image, you will get detailed information about the class, including
skills and abilities. Your main hero unit is crucial for battles, so selecting
the right character profile is important if you want to win decisive battles.

Time Travel Heroes focuses more on team-based combat instead of tiresome
base-building or resource-management systems. Your key focus will always be on
enhancing weapons, upgrading heroes, recruiting new hero units for turn-based
battles and getting your team formations right. The game world is divided into
key historic cities and each pre-built city boasts a shop, a storehouse, an inn,
mansion and a battlefield where fighting against rival kings and demons take
place. You will need to click on each of these buildings to take up quests,
trade in-game currency for weapons and recruit heroes for battles.

City View

Each city has a special combat-centric quest in store for you. You will need
to fight a series of battles against archers, warriors and cavalrymen first
before the penultimate battle against a mini-boss begins. As you progress
through your campaign, you will unlock heroes, weapons, attributes and weapon
enhancements. Once a campaign ends, you will be teleported to another city where
a new campaign starts. Each campaign has a story of its own, which can be
followed up by reading the dialogues between your character and NPCs. I found
the dialogues between two characters worthy of note, as they really add more
interest to the overall gameplay. The dialogues exchanged between you and your
opponent as well as enemy taunts in-between a crucial battle is fun to read and
make up an absorbing combat experience.

Battle Arena

Combat is turn-based. The tile-based battle arena allows you to place your
recruited heroes on unlocked tiles. An automated battle ensues between you and
your opponents. Your main hero and team members take turns to hit the enemy team
members or unleash special skills for maximum damage. While the preset combat
looks good, I would have loved to see a manual combat option where one can
choose an unlocked hero and place him/her at a tactical spot within the tile
set. This will really give him the freedom to chalk out a potent strategy,
especially against hard-to-defeat enemies. In this game, a tile gets unlocked
only after you unlock a hero. For me this really restricts a player from
experimenting with his hero units. He has to choose only those open tiles and
place hero units on them. At the most the player can swap places, but can't
place it on a locked tile. However, a player can upgrade to a new formation
pattern via the Tech menu. This somehow, is a novel way to line up his team
members in some of the most unusual patterns and then go for a final showdown.
The formation patterns are extremely powerful against boss monsters.

RPG-Like Trading System

The Role-playing game elements infused into this game add more zing to the
entire gameplay structure. Leveling-up unlocks upgrade packs, abilities and
formation patterns. Upgrade packs can be used to add more weapons, armor and
magical items. Special abilities improve both your hero and team members attack
and defense stats. Like a typical RPG game, Time Travel Heroes has a shop where
you can trade weapons and items for copper, the game's standard currency. You
can also sell your outdated weapons or those items you find adding more weight
to your bag for copper. I found the RPG infusion an excellent addition to this
game. It does compensate for the lack of a proper manual turn-based combat
system and lets you experiment by enhancing your hero abilities, equipping them
with weapons, armor, magical amulets and other items.

The game's premium currency, Gold can be used for purchasing VIP recharges,
which grants advanced abilities, formation patterns and lets you buy exciting
Arena Challenges. I would recommend buying them at later stages and advanced
campaigns. Some of the amulets exchanged for gold can be quite useful for future
campaigns. You do earn gold by completing tasks, leveling up and finishing
quests, but you can add more if you buy in exchange for real currency.

Game Interface

The game has a visually-appealing layout. Character animations are crisp and
the top-down visuals of cities and towns is pretty well designed. The graphics
and animations are pretty good for a browser-based game. I found the game
interface easy-to-use and clutter-free. All key menus are located at the
bottom-right corner of the screen and a tiny chat interface is to your left. The
stats menu is at the top-left corner of the screen, showing you the amount of
copper you currently have, gold and strength and your current level. Every menu
and submenu is located at their right place, giving you an easy access to
settings and options.

As far as turn-based strategy games go, Time Travel Heroes is engaging and
immersive. It has a nice storyline, a robust campaign-based gameplay and a good
team formation-centric combat. A commendable aspect of the game is its RPG
elements. Your strategic battles are heavily dependent on weapon enhancements,
leveling up, upgrading abilities and formations. Without these role-playing
elements, gameplay would have been a bit boring. The game is well worth checking
out for fans of both strategy and role-playing games.

Self Introduction From Author:

Anurag Ghosh

Anurag Ghosh is a social gaming aficionado who enjoys playing Facebook and
browser-based games. He loves writing strategy guides, walkthroughs and
tips/tricks that help newbie and expert gamers alike. Follow his guides and tips
to learn more about your favorite social/browser
games.